Thursday, September 9, 2010

The last act of a desperate loon: a false rape accusation

A man falsely accused of drugging and raping his stalker has spoken about how he was cleared of the falsified claims after new DNA evidence proved the allegations had been made up.

As reported by The Independent, Dr Jan Falkowski endured four years of being bombarded by text messages, being accused of rape and death threats made to his fiancé.

"My life was going fairly well, I was quite happy with things, no major problems, and then suddenly everything changed overnight, literally, without any warning," said Dr Falkowski.

After his stalker, whose identity was unknown, threatened to have his fiancé killed if they got marred, Dr Falkowski and the police staged a fake wedding. They caught Maria Marchese sending 20 to 30 frantic texts near the scene of the wedding, and she was arrested.

However, the Crown Prosecution Service said there wasn't enough evidence to charge her, despite the fact that Ms Marchese had a shrine dedicated to Dr Falkowski in her home.

It was then that she claimed Dr Falkowski had raped her. Ms Marchese even stole a used condom from a bin outside his girlfriend's flat and smeared the DNA inside her underwear, in the hope that a DNA test would tie Dr Falkowski to the alleged crime. However, the DNA test couldn't be tricked as it detected his girlfriend's DNA too. Dr Falkowski hadn't even met his girlfriend at the time Ms Marchese claimed to have been raped.

Eventually Ms Marchese was prosecuted for harassment.

Dr Falkowski's story is the subject of a new TV drama starring David Morrisey. "A few people said it was such an interesting story that somebody was bound to do something about it, so it would be better to be involved so that it told our side of the story accurately," explained Dr Falkowski.